Pacific Rim: Who needs maturity nowadays?

Rating: 9/10 (13 July 2013)

7 months ago, when I first heard about 'Pacific Rim' I had my doubts. First of all I thought that the Robot VS Monster battles wouldn't work out, and then I thought that this wasn't the kind of film Guillermo Del Toro should be directing. Alas, last night all my doubts were washed away!
Pacific rim is a triumph of sci-fi monster/action films. The film starts with a prologue to explain how and why the planet has changed, to tell us just why we need to defend ourselves. Admittedly, the truth was horrifying; giant monsters (called 'Kaiju) had bridged our dimension to theirs, and they were coming to get us. In the first sequence we get a sense of the scale of this as the Kaiju topple buildings and obliterate our standard military forces. Then, however, we get to see our own scaled-up war machine; The Jaeger robots. We are given an incredible sequence in which we see the pilots of the US's Gypsy Danger Jaeger being assembled in preparation for battle. The pilots' minds combined in control over the mighty machine. This was so much epic at once, I almost cried.
Del Toro's triumph isn't just scale, however. Despite all of our successes against the invasion, we ARE NOT invincible. This is, honestly, rather scary. The Kaiju start beating us badly (as we see when one of our supposedly triumphant Jaegers is almost torn to pieces), and ALL of our defences start to fail. The walls we build crumble within an hour of being attacked, and our Jaegers have to be brought out of retirement, only to be battered again and again. This made me feel scared, I wondered how we would deal with this threat today, and whether or not WE could adapt before they did.
But scary monsters aside, this film delivered action in ways I have never seen before. It's amazing to see colossal robots fighting colossal monsters like that in 'Pacific Rim'. The fights aren't speedy, having to carry the weight of it's participants, and we are continuously placed in the middle of them so that we can see just how much damage is being done; to the fighters AND our pilots. There was not a single second where I wasn't absolutely amazed by the strength of the CGI, and how it all felt so astonishingly real. When the Jaeger was hurt, you could see it was hurt, same for the Kaiju. And yet, surprises are thrown at us throughout as our strengths become weaknesses and vice-versa. Del Toro did a great job of turning the emotional pilot-bonds into a will to fight and survive. The emotions at the base known as the 'Shatterdome' are taking into battle, crippling some fights but strengthening others.
The cinematography was also exceptional. When the waters of the pacific ocean filled the screen, when waves pushed Jaegers and Kaijus back and forth, when buildings fell and cars exploded, I could have actually been in the film. I didn't see it in 3d of IMAX (if it isn't filmed in IMAX or d, I won't waste my money seeing it in those formats), but that didn't detract from my complete immersion into the battle sequences. As we see lights illuminate the waters and Kaijus causing almost tsunami- scale waves to burst forth, I was utterly entranced by the power of this film's CGI; it was the best I have ever seen.
I can't really comment on acting, because most of the acting, in my opinion, was done by the Jaegers and Kaijus in the battles. Idris Elba certainly had an authority about him, and Charlie Hunman was clearly scarred by the loss of his brother in a Jaeger-crippling battle, but that didn't matter too much to me because, after all, I was there for the action.
I would have liked a few less emotional scenes, admittedly, as they did seem to be out of place at times (Why there have to be a fight between Raleigh and Chuck over a girl I don't know), and the comedic battles between two scientists with two different solutions did detract from the action slightly due to their placement during the middle of some battles. Their humour also fell flat on the audience at times, leading to some pointless cutaways that should have been cutaway from the final edit of the film.
'Pacific Rim' was so much better than I expected it to be. In the beginning I thought it looked a bit, well, naff. I didn't like the sequencing too much, but I have a feeling that was intentional, to make us feel that the scale of the problem wasn't that impressive, until later on when it becomes clear that it is. I honestly believe that what Del Toro has done is created one of the best Sci-fi films in this decade, n#and I know for sure that the Kaiju are my favourite movie monsters of all time. If you go into this expecting anything other than close-up, over the top, reference-filled, anime and Godzilla homage-d action, then think again. This film made me feel like a 6 year old playing with my monster and robot toys on the carpet, and I really like that feeling; 8.9/10.